Buhari supported our decision to zone presidency to South – El-Rufai

Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai has revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari has always been in support of the decision of Northern governors under the All Progressives Congress to zone the presidency to the South.

The Kaduna State Governor made this known during a chat on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

• 2023: INEC deploys additional 209 machines as more Nigerians show interest
• We’ll work against Atiku in a very forceful way – Fani Kayode

“The only governors who did not agree with our stand were governor Yahaya Bello who was contesting and governor Mai Mala Buni who was supporting the senate president and we felt it was in the interest of our party, Northern Nigeria and in the interest of Nigeria that we felt to do so and the president supported us 100 per cent,” El-Rufai said.

He added that after coming up with a signed agreement and a communique which was meant to be submitted to President Buhari, the communique leaked and Governor El-Rufai said the president appreciated the leakeage.

He stated, “When we saw that the whole idea was gaining momentum, we started to discuss among ourselves, a few governors in the beginning then we reached out to all the other governors and then pointed out the danger of doing away with a principle of our party just becase of some intervening events in another political party and we felt that we had to take a position and we did.

“We sent a delegation to inform Mr President of our position but before they saw the president, the document that we signed and our communique leaked and we felt disappointed and they didn’t want to see the president because the communique leaked. A couple of days later, we saw the president, we explained the circumstances of the leakage and apologized for the leakage.

“The president was not only pleased about the leakage, he told us that he had no anointed one.”

El-Rufai disclosed that Buhari instructed the Northern governors to present him with five names.

“The president told us to go and meet with the party, give him five names and he will consider announting one of them. The following day, we submitted five names to the president, he looked at them and he said these names are all from the South and only one of these can lead Nigeria, lets go to primaries and may the best man win,” he added.